INDUSTRY AND THE PROFESSION, BIG TELESCOPE FOR THE BIG BANG

INDUSTRY AND THE PROFESSION, BIG TELESCOPE FOR
THE BIG BANG

In case you haven't heard about it, the folks at the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Organisation (www.skatelescope.org) are working on the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope, to be completed in 2024. Upon completion, the telescope will be used to explore evolving galaxies, dark matter, and even the very origins of the universe, dating back more than 13 billion years.

The scope will actually be made up of millions of antennas, forming a collection area equivalent to a square kilometer but actually spread out over an area more than 3,000 km wide. This will give the world a device that's 50 times more sensitive and 10,000 times faster than any previous one. The catch, however, is that it will generate a few exabytes (i.e., 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of data every day — equivalent to double what presently goes over the Internet.

This will take some pretty gritty processing power, plus enough storage for between 300 and 1,500 petabytes of processed data per year. Never fear, though, since the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) and IBM (www.ibm.com) have teamed up in the "design, engineering, and manufacturing of customized, high performance, low power analog and mixed signal processing chips for an SKA prototype system." With an initial grant of 32.9 million Euros, the five year collaboration will end up with a new supercomputer based in Drenthe, Netherlands at a newly established ASTRON and IBM Center for Exascale Technology. To keep up to date on the project, visit www.astron.nl.